Flipped classrooms turning tradition on its head

Video lectures frees more classtime for students, teachers

Nathanial Friedrich, in background, uses his Apple Ipod to listen to mathematics lessons in Jo-Ann Fox's class at Reidy Creek Elementary School in Escondido. Fox "flips" her class when teaching math, having students watch video lectures and doing homework in class.
— John Gastaldo

Nathanial Friedrich, in background, uses his Apple Ipod to listen to mathematics lessons in Jo-Ann Fox's class at Reidy Creek Elementary School in Escondido. Fox "flips" her class when teaching math, having students watch video lectures and doing homework in class.
— John Gastaldo

A growing number of teachers nationwide are challenging a long-held educational tradition by asking their students to watch recorded lectures at home and do their homework in class.

The model, known as the flipped classroom, has been embraced by some local instructors who say it gives them more time for meaningful learning encounters, which pays off with students who are more involved and knowledgeable.

“The engagement is higher and I have more interaction,” said Jo-Ann Fox, who teaches 32 students at Reidy Creek Elementary School in Escondido. “I know my students’ strengths and weaknesses better than I ever have before.”

Fox spends four hours each weekend making five or six videos, which feature her voice over graphics explaining math concepts. Students watch the videos at home or sometimes in class — on a computer, tablet, DVD player or smartphone — pausing or rewinding for repeated viewing if necessary to understand the lesson.

A quick review of a quiz given the next morning shows Fox who scored low, and she meets with those students to go over the material while their classmates do other assignments.

Jo-Ann Fox talks with students at Reidy Creek Elementary School in Escondido following a morning math quiz.
— John Gastaldo

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Jo-Ann Fox talks with students at Reidy Creek Elementary School in Escondido following a morning math quiz.
— John Gastaldo

“I’m not waiting until Friday’s test to see who didn’t understand something,” Fox said. Another benefit, she noted, is that she can devote more face-to-face time with students who need help because she spends less time giving lectures in the classroom.

That extra interaction is the prime advantage of the flipped classroom, said Kevin Fairchild, a science teacher on special assignment to help teachers use technology in the San Dieguito Union High School District.

“A lot of teachers are deciding that providing direct (lectures) is not the best use of that time, but guiding them in higher-level thinking activities is a better use of time,” he said.

Fairchild said there’s rising interest in flipped classrooms in his district, which is located in Encinitas, and he expects to see more teachers adopting the method next year.

He sees the model as a new way providing inquiry-based learning, where students discover knowledge by their own initiative instead of through listening to a lecture.

Jon Bergmann, credited with cofounding the flipped-classroom idea with Aaron Sams, said that indeed is the point.

“I think the key is to move to a student-centered classroom,” he said in a telephone interview from Chicago. “I don’t think it’s the answer to education, but it’s the way to the answer.”

While discussions of the concept predated his work, Bergmann said he and Sams had not heard of the strategy when they introduced it in their classrooms at a Colorado high school in 2007.

Interest in the approach picked up after they chronicled their success on websites for science teachers. Their book on the topic, “Flip Your Classroom,” was released in San Diego at last year’s convention for the International Society for Technology in Education.

As more teachers learned about the model, Bergmann said the online Flipped Learning Network grew from 1,000 members last fall to about 11,000 today.

Bergmann, who works full time as a technology facilitator for a Chicago-area school district, serves on the board of the nonprofit Flipped Learning Network. The group is organizing the sixth annual Flipped Learning Conference in Stillwater, Minn., this June.

“It’s international,” Bergmann said. “I was just finishing a promo video for my trip to Dubai, where there’s a big conference with Arab educators. There’s a huge interest in Europe. I’m going to Iceland in April, and we were in the Netherlands and London in January.”

Jerry Overmyer, mathematics and science outreach coordinator at the University of Northern Colorado and creator of the Flipped Class Network, said the concept is gaining popularity because technological advances are making implementation easier.

“Even when I started this three or four years ago, it was quite a process,” he said. “If you wanted to make a screen test or vodcast, you had to be pretty tech-savvy. Now, it’s just really a matter of hitting record and having a link to your students.”

Overmyer cautioned that flipped classrooms could fizzle out as a fad if teachers try to follow a strict formula.

“There’s no one right way to do a flipped classroom,” he said, adding that its success is dependent on a teacher’s training, the subject matter and the mix of students. “But if you look at it as leveraging technology to make classroom time more useful, it’s certainly going to have longevity.”

Chris Faist and Tracy McCabe, life-science teachers at Carmel Valley Middle School in the San Dieguito Union High School District, introduced flipped learning to their classrooms this school year after looking for a new instruction method last summer.

“Tracy and I had a conversation about how direct instruction doesn’t work for all students,” Faist said. “Sitting there with a college-type lecture is not going to work for all 12-year-olds.”

To create videos for his students, Faist said he uses a variety of sources from the Internet, including YouTube, virtual labs and educational websites.

“By the time they come to the class, they’ve heard the vocabulary and the concept,” he said. “They have some knowledge to be able to ask questions. I can probe those questions, and I don’t have to spend any of that time on simple stuff. I can delve into deeper concepts.”

At the San Diego County Office of Education, flipped classrooms are seen as another example of school districts offering more blended learning — or classes that use direct learning and online lessons.

“Honestly, if you were to look across the country, there are many school districts moving forward with blended learning,” said Greg Ottinger, director of online and blended learning.

While much of the flipped classroom movement has been on the grassroots level and driven by individual teachers, institutions and legislators have begun responding to the demand for such blended-learning options, said Bill Robinson, senior director of the digital resources unit at the county Office of Education.

That office offers an eight-week professional development course in blended teaching, Ottinger said, and state legislators last year approved targeted funding for public schools where teachers and students communicate live online.

Bergmann acknowledges that access to technology, which can be expensive, has been a common criticism of flipped classrooms. But he said teachers can still implement the model by using flash drives, DVDs or shared iPods and iPads in the classroom.

“I think the biggest hurdle is not the technology,” he said. “It’s the flipping of the minds of the teachers.”

For an example of how Jo-Ann Fox uses videos to teach her students, visit her website.